How to build the best intranet team: Ideal team sizes and functions explained
Enterprises are increasingly focusing on creating a world-class employee experience, with the intranet playing a central role. However, there are few established guidelines for building an effective intranet team in this new era of people-centric approaches. Who should be involved? How many people are in the ideal intranet team? We explore three strategies for assembling a successful intranet team.
The blueprint to your intranet team
As people teams gain prominence within organizations, the significance of intranets is also rising. This trend benefits HR, internal communications, and other leaders focused on people. However, the rapid evolution of intranets means there is no clear-cut process or well-established methodology to follow.
Enterprises, in particular, have rich and varied histories, with changes to structures common on their way to success. This leaves many organizations without a blueprint for creating the optimal intranet team.
As the scope and importance of the intranet grows alongside the importance of employee experience, people teams, sponsors and change leaders are looking for a model to follow. If we look at high tech implementation projects like ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and HRIS (Human Resources Implementation Systems), we see clear blueprints with agreed stages [Oracle NetSuite] and clear team requirements. There is little when it comes to creating an intranet.
How many people should be on your intranet team?
Intranet teams vary in size. National Grid, for example, has a workforce of over 30,000 colleagues and a team of just four to maintain its award-winning intranet. Other organizations have much larger teams to manage their intranet.
Nielsen Norman [NN/g] looked at the average team sizes for the winners of their Intranet Design award. They found very little correlation between the size of the organization, the size of the intranet team, and the number of outside agencies used. For example, AbbVie has 50,000 employees and an intranet team of just four, while OCBC Bank has a team of 27 and 30,000 employees.
To determine the size of your intranet team, you’ll need to decide:
- Who is responsible for updating and creating content? Is core content created by the core intranet team and other content created by various different teams? If your intranet team is only responsible for core content, you will need a smaller team.
- Who will update the technology? How much is your intranet vendor able to support, and how much will be done by an internal team?
- Who manages incremental improvements?
- Who is responsible for graphic design?
Three ways to build an intranet team
The number of people that need to be involved in creating an intranet is not an exact science. There are many examples of award-winning intranets developed rapidly [NN/g] with small teams to help their organizations overcome difficult conditions, for example during the pandemic.
There are, however, a few different approaches organizations can take when building the best intranet team. This article will outline three approaches organizations can take.
#1 The EX superteam
The EX superteam is ideal for organizations wanting to build an intranet to optimize their employee experience. Decision-makers should include experts in employee experience and those dedicated to achieving the highest EX standards for their organization.
The EX superteam are able to collaborate to design an outstanding design navigation, and challenge each other. The emphasis is on delivering quality and making a significant impact on launch day.
An excellent example of an intranet designed by the EX super team is Baker Hughes. The world's leading energy technology company, Baker Hughes operates in 120 countries. Their intranet needed to facilitate communication between frontline and office-based teams, provide easy access for the 34% of employees without desktop access, and include future-focused features like stories and information to unite over 50,000 employees towards ambitious goals.
This team should include key representatives from all departments involved in shaping the employee experience, such as HR, internal communications, and employee engagement teams. While these teams may have different perspectives, they can form a committee to challenge each other and establish clear processes for creating the optimal employee experience.
The EX super team may take longer to make decisions but will deliver a high quality, fully fledged employee experience platform that hits the ground running.
EX Impact: High
Time & Resource: Mid
Employee Sentiment: Mid
#2 The user-driven team
The user-driven team is centered around listening and feedback. It’s a popular option for those looking to build an intranet for a heavily frontline workforce.
The user-driven team is focused on 'undesked' workers, accepting that a project team of knowledge workers will find it more challenging to make the best decisions for roles they do not perform. This consists of a small, skeleton team of knowledge workers who focus on building personas and creating robust processes to draft names, navigation, IA, and search. The ideas created are sent out to employees and focus groups.
An example of a brilliant intranet designed by a user-driven team is Wacker. The workforce consists of scientists and engineers, all experts who have made the enterprise a pioneer in modern chemistry for over 100 years. Their user-led intranet, Globe, reimagines collaboration across an expansive network of employees and partners, who work in manufacturing sites, research and development centers, labs, and offices. The intranet building phase involved an extensive research period comprising focus groups and user testing. The result is cutting edge collaboration with and between internal employees as well as external partners, and new levels of efficiency.
The final decisions for a user-driven intranet team will be made by voting. It is vital that people from all parts of the organization’s workforce are regularly involved.
EX Impact: Mid
Time & Resource: High
Employee Sentiment: High
#3 The speedy team
The speedy intranet team’s mission is to keep intranet design simple and quick. This will generally be a small team, which is led by employee communications.
The speedy team will usually prioritize the communications function of their intranet. They are agile and able to get their site up and running quickly.
A brilliant example of a best-in-class speedy intranet team is Flight Centre. Their award-winning intranet empowers over 19,000 employees with features that ensure optimum productivity. The organization excels through expert travel knowledge around the globe, and its customer service. The team required an intranet that would make it easy to serve customers with accurate information, as quickly as possible.
Design was a key focus, to encourage adoption rates, with one-click access to vital tools and the information necessary to increase productivity. Search was an important factor, giving employees faster, more intuitive ways to find the information required to give customers a better experience.
EX Impact: Low
Time & Resource: Low
Employee Sentiment: Mid
Conclusion
The intranet has the power to transform enterprises. From central repositories to fully functioning employee experience platforms, they can boost retention, help employees be more productive and engaged, align teams with the organization’s overall mission, and ultimately improve the customer experience.
Having an intranet team that works for your business aims is the best way to build a superior intranet solution for your organization.
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Intranet Teams FAQs
What are the three functions within an intranet team?
There are three core functions for an intranet team:
Design and structure. This is often managed by power users, who make sure the design and structure of the intranet are effective and functional. They are responsible for the overall vision for the intranet, and should be a team of no more than six people.
This team will need an effective process for governance, an efficient way to gather and respond to employee feedback, identify business needs, manage stakeholders, decide and implement improvements, and manage content processes.
Technical. Usually responsible for data and the smooth running of the intranet. This team may be internal or external. The team will usually maintain servers, handle network configuration, installations and updates, manage integration with other tools, provide backups, and support users.
Content. Create content and keep it up to date. This team may be smaller, depending how much content is produced, and how much of it is user generated. These team members will write articles and news, update existing content and ensure it is kept up to date, compile resources, handle quality control, and archive outdated content.
Which department owns the intranet?
Several departments need to work together to create the best intranet for your organization. This includes HR, employee communications, and other teams. Your organization’s intranet performs many functions, therefore it needs different departments’ input to run smoothly.
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